'The End of Drum-Time' captures a complicated love story in an Arctic community

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Hanna Pylväinen's new novel, The End of Drum-Time, opens with the ground quite literally shaking beneath a Lutheran congregation. It sets the tone for a novel wrapped up in understanding how faith, nature and human connection work alongside – and sometimes against – one another in an 1850s community of native Sámi reindeer herders in the Scandinavian Arctic. In today's episode, Pylväinen speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about the nuances of writing in an omniscient voice and the power of lived experience for understanding a faraway place and culture.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Linda Holmes. I learned to wrestle a reindeer calf to the ground. I've listened to a lot of conversations with a lot of writers, but I've never heard that before.
0:15.3	Hannah Pilvin says she really did learn that in her six trips to the Arctic Circle that helped her write her novel,
0:22.5	the end of drum time. It takes place in a Scandinavian village, and Pilvinan talks to NPR Scott
0:28.4	Simon about those trips, the meaning of earthquakes, and learning new things about the faiths
0:33.5	she grew up with. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:39.7	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:44.2	On our new show, Sources and Methods, NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of
0:48.7	real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
0:53.8	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:59.9	The end of drumtime opens with an earthquake.
1:03.0	It shakes a small town in the Scandinavian tundra in 1851,
1:07.7	while a Lutheran minister named Lars Levy, also known as Mad Lassie, is holding forth to his congregation of reindeer herders and their families.
1:16.4	Let's ask Hannah Pilvin, the author of this novel, to bring us there.
1:21.1	The shaking stopped and the floor stilled, but the children screamed, and their mothers tried to still their screaming, and the men
1:28.3	alternately laughed and shouted their fear. Larson Levy was filled mostly with amazement.
1:34.3	Hadn't this happened when Christ had died? Hadn't God sent an earthquake to mark the moment of his
1:39.7	sacrifice? The force of this realization nearly made L Lars Levi fall to his own knees.
1:45.4	He looked at his congregants, his parishioners, his reindeer skittish on the snow,
1:50.7	and he saw them multiply before him, ten upon ten, so that the back of the church was not littered
1:56.8	with drunks who stink of their drinking, but instead each face shone clean and each body's
2:01.9	blood coursed with the mysteries and the magics of Christ. He found himself suddenly, saying this,
2:08.0	some form of this. He was talking without hearing himself speak, speaking without feeling himself
	...

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